President Barack Obama has come through on a campaign promise to oppose plans to build a storage vault for nuclear waste at Yucca Mountain in Nevada. Yesterday's budget request scales back funding for the project to the bare minimum necessary to continue answering queries from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. "Nuclear waste storage at Yucca Mountain is not an option, period," said Stephanie Mueller, press secretary for Energy Secretary Steven Chu.

Mueller says the Administration will come up with a "new approach" for managing nuclear waste. The nuclear industry, meanwhile, says if the government isn't planning to build the repository, it should also cut back the amount that electricity consumers are required to pay into a fund for nuclear waste disposal.